What Hokusai's Great Wave can teach you about data visualisation

Hokusai's The great wave off Kanagawa is one of the most famous artworks to come out of Japan. People generally assume it depicts a tsunami. But in fact, the subject of the painting is Mount Fuji. Great Wave is part of a set of 36 paintings, each showing Mount Fuji from a different perspective.

There's no 'right' way to look at Mount Fuji, just as there's no 'right' way to present data. How you present it will depend on what questions you're asking (to use designer Manuel Lima's examples: "How does Mt Fuji look in summer? How does it look from the village?") and what you want the audience to take away with them.